Technical description of different OoA processes

Energy transfer Resin cure kinetics Automation  

The principal idea of OoA is to get away from high pressure curing. This will allow for more economical equipment acquisition and maintenance, and eliminate the need for compressed nitrogen. However, usually VBO processes can only be used for thermosets not for thermoplastics due to this characteristic low pressure. There are two main areas where oven curing is used  

In comparison to an autoclave, ovens are much cheaper but are still batch production processes. Therefore, they are also a bottleneck and if the part does not fit in the oven a completely new piece of equipment needs to be acquired to produce the part. A summary of the pros and cons concerning convection oven curing are shown in Table 14.2. 

Low investment Large number of parts per cure possible (good for high variety of parts but low volume each) 

Long history of experience in industry Applicable for perform and infusion processing 

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